It was the first day back: new school, new year, new class. As I waved them off at 3.20 - attempting in vain to commit the image of them and their registered owners to memory - one of the parents appeared at my side.

“Hope you had a good summer, Mrs Brighouse,” she told me. “I thought you’d like to know: I’ve just asked him and he said you’re strict but he likes you.”

I looked blankly at her, unsure as to how to respond to this piece of unsolicited real-time feedback. Was I supposed to breathe a sigh of relief at having passed muster? What if her son’s report had been unfavourable? Would she have come over to tell me I was rubbish and he couldn’t stand me?

Of course, it’s always better if the pupils in your class like you but, either way, does it really matter?

Teachers ranked

When I was an NQT I remember driving some of my girls to a netball tournament while they ranked the teachers according to strictness and scariness in the back of the car.

“What about me?” I unwisely asked them. “Am I strict and scary?”

“No!” they laughed. “You’re fun!”

I was gutted. No one wants to be the “fun” teacher - with all the connotations of lack of discipline that brings. As an NQT I didn’t care about being liked. My sole ambition was to become one of those teachers who could silence a class with one lift of an eyebrow and whose footsteps on the corridor would have even your most persistent miscreants tucking in their shirts and standing to attention.

Now, many years on, I’ve had to accept I am never going to be one of those teachers. Some things you just can’t manufacture. You can follow the school rules to the letter, raise your eyebrows at any angle you like but if you don’t have the personality to back it up it won’t happen.

Because teaching isn’t a science. It’s essentially a group of 30 child-sized personalities interacting with one adult personality.

All about relationships

Anyone who doubts that primary teaching is all about relationships should try doing day-to-day supply - it has to be the least satisfying version of the job. Yes, you leave the building marking-free, but you spend the day teaching children you can’t name, disciplining children who have no reason to trust you and rarely doing more than scratching the surface in terms of learning.

With a class of your own, it’s so different. You go through the new year ritual of mutual sizing up: you lay down the order and establish respect, they test the boundaries to check you mean it. Along the way, you connect with them.

If you get it right, it brings respect and (more often than not) liking. We may dismiss the notion of teacher likeability as irrelevant but it’s human nature to want to work harder for someone you like. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first question most parents ask their children after their first day back is “do you like your teacher?”

Which is not to say we should go in all stickers and extra playtime - actively trying to garner affection in the classroom will have you on a highway to nowhere - but throwing a few smiles out there never goes amiss.

And if some days you get it wrong, the next day you can change tack and have another go. My new class might not be angels but this time the challenging children are my challenging children - and that makes all the difference.

Jo Brighouse is a pseudonym of a primary school teacher in the West Midlands. She tweets @jo_brighouse

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